The Exasperation of the Democratic Billionaire Real-estate and newspaper mogul Mortimer Zuckerman voted for Obama but began seeing trouble as soon as the stimulus went into the pockets of municipal unions.By JAMES FREEMAN New York

'It's as if he doesn't like people," says real-estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman of the president of the United States. Barack Obama doesn't seem to care for individuals, elaborates Mr. Zuckerman, though the president enjoys addressing millions of them on television.

The Boston Properties CEO is trying to understand why Mr. Obama has made little effort to build relationships on Capitol Hill or negotiate a bipartisan economic plan. A longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, Mr. Zuckerman wrote in these pages two months ago that the entire business community was "pleading for some kind of adult supervision" in Washington and "desperate for strong leadership." Writing soon after the historic downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt by Standard & Poor's, he wrote, "I long for a triple-A president to run a triple-A country."

His words struck a chord. When I visit Mr. Zuckerman this week in his midtown Manhattan office, he reports that three people approached him at dinner the previous evening to discuss his August op-ed. Among business executives who supported Barack Obama in 2008, he says, "there is enormously widespread anxiety over the political leadership of the country." Mr. Zuckerman reports that among Democrats, "The sense is that the policies of this government have failed. . . . What they say about [Mr. Obama] when he's not in the room, so to speak, is astonishing."

We are sitting on the 18th floor of a skyscraper the day after protesters have marched on the homes of other Manhattan billionaires. It may seem odd that most of the targeted rich people had nothing to do with creating the financial crisis. But as Mr. Zuckerman ponders the Occupy Wall Street movement, he concludes that "the door to it was opened by the Obama administration, going after the 'millionaires and billionaires' as if everybody is a millionaire and a billionaire and they didn't earn it. . . . To fan that flame of populist anger I think is very divisive and very dangerous for this country."

This doesn't mean that Mr. Zuckerman opposes the protesters or questions their motives. When pressed, he concedes that the crowd in Lower Manhattan may include some full-time radicals, but he argues that the protesters are people with a legitimate grievance, as the country suffers high unemployment and stagnant middle-class incomes.

It is a subject he has obviously studied at length, and he explains how the real unemployment rate is actually well above the official level of 9.1%, which only measures people who have applied for a job within the previous four weeks. In fact, he says, unemployment has even surged beyond the Department of Labor's "U-6" number of 16.5% that has received increasing attention lately because it includes people who have given up looking for work within the past year, plus people who have been cut back from full-time employees to part-timers.

Mr. Zuckerman says that when you also consider the labor-force participation rate and the so-called "birth-death series" that measures business starts and failures, the real U.S. unemployment rate is now 20%. His voice rising with equal parts anger and sadness, he exclaims, "That's not America!"

It certainly isn't the America that Mr. Zuckerman discovered when he moved south from Canada to study at Wharton and Harvard Law School, graduating from both in the early 1960s. He reports feeling immediately at home and says he never considered returning "because of the sheer openness and energy of life in America."

The U.S. "has fundamentally great qualities," he says. "It's a society that welcomes talent, nourishes talent, admires talent . . . and rewards talent." But he sees "potentially catastrophic" political and fiscal problems. Mr. Zuckerman reports that when he was a young man, 50% of the top quartile of graduates from Canadian universities moved to the U.S. Now, he says, "I don't want my daughter telling me, 'Dad, I want to move back to Canada because that's the land of opportunity.'"

Mr. Zuckerman's bearish outlook since 2006 has been good for his business. That's when he decided that there was a bubble in commercial real estate and his publicly traded real estate investment trust needed to sell some of its office buildings.

'We've had a strategy in our business of trying to have 'A' assets in 'A' locations. I think we had 126 buildings at that point and we came to the conclusion that 16 of them were either A assets in B locations or B assets in A locations, like 280 Park [Avenue in New York]—it was a great address but not a good building. So we sold. We got through 15 of the 16 and we raised in the range of four and a half billion dollars," he says.

Once the downturn began, that cash pile helped him buy some famous properties at depressed prices, such as the General Motors building in New York and the John Hancock Tower in Boston. But he says his firm is still prepared for possible rough economic times ahead. "We're keeping it very liquid," he says, "because I don't know where this is going."

Mr. Zuckerman maintains that America will solve its problems over the long haul—"I am not somebody who's pessimistic about this country. I have had a life that's been better than my fantasies," he says—but he's certainly pessimistic about the current administration. That began shortly after inauguration day in 2009.

At that time he supported Mr. Obama's call for heavy spending on infrastructure. "But if you look at the make-up of the stimulus program," says Mr. Zuckerman, "roughly half of it went to state and local municipalities, which is in effect to the municipal unions which are at the core of the Democratic Party." He adds that "the Republicans understood this" and it diminished the chances for bipartisan legislating.

Then there was health-care reform: "Eighty percent of the country wanted them to get costs under control, not to extend the coverage. They used all their political capital to extend the coverage. I always had the feeling the country looked at that bill and said, 'Well, he may be doing it because he wants to be a transformational president, but I want to get my costs down!'"

Mr. Zuckerman recalls reports of Mr. Obama consulting various historians on the qualities of a transformational president. "But remember, transformations can go up and they can go down."

Now comes the latest fight over Mr. Obama's jobs plan, which has as its centerpiece a tax increase on the wealthy with obvious populist appeal. Mr. Zuckerman supports raising taxes on the rich but says such a proposal cannot be taken seriously unless it's paired with other measures to grow the economy and restrain deficit spending. He also wonders why, if the president wanted to get a plan enacted, he didn't begin with private bipartisan discussions with House and Senate leaders, instead of another address to a joint session of Congress.

"Even if you want to do this to revive your support in the base, to revive your credibility on the issues of the economy and jobs, which has fallen off the table, this isn't going to accomplish it. Another speech from this guy? The country knows this is just another speech. They understand it almost instantaneously, and his numbers have continued to go down for that reason. What the country wanted was some way of coming up with a solution."

The only solution Mr. Zuckerman sees now to juice the economy "is to broaden the tax base and simplify and lower tax [rates]. To me that will be as close to revenue-neutral as you're going to have so it isn't going to be seen as a budget buster." He views GOP candidate Herman Cain's "9-9-9 plan" as a "little bit simple-minded," but he says that a reform that closes loopholes and reduces compliance costs will stimulate both business and consumer spending.

Mr. Zuckerman sees a need for a cooperative effort like that of President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill when they reformed Social Security in 1983. That wasn't a permanent solution, of course, as Social Security needs more significant changes now, but Mr. Zuckerman sees it as a model of bipartisan progress.

Unprompted, he spends much of our discussion reminiscing about the Reagan presidency. Mr. Zuckerman has for years owned U.S. News and World Report, and in 1986 its Moscow correspondent Nicholas Daniloff was seized without warning by the KGB.

Mr. Zuckerman immediately flew to Russia but returned home when Soviet officials refused to release their new prisoner. "I worked in the White House for the next four weeks virtually every day and through that I met Reagan," says Mr. Zuckerman. Reagan secured Mr. Daniloff's release in a swap that included a Soviet spy held in the U.S.

"Reagan surprised me," says Mr. Zuckerman. "He got the point of every argument. . . . He was very decisive. And everybody loved working for him. They followed his lead because they really respected his decisiveness and his instincts."

'I was not a Republican and I was not an admirer of his before I knew him," continues Mr. Zuckerman. "And you know, Harry Truman had a wonderful definition for the presidency. He said the president has to be someone who can persuade the American people to do what they don't want to do and to like it. And that's what you have to do. Somebody like Reagan had that authority. He was liked so much and he had a kind of moral authority. That's what this president has lost."

"Democracy does not work without the right leadership," he says later, "and you can't play politics." The smile inspired by Reagan memories is gone now and Mr. Zuckerman is pounding his circular conference table. "The country has got to come to the conclusion at some point that what you're doing is not just because of an ideology or politics but for the interests of the country."

The 2011 budget deficit for the federal government is $1.299 trillion according to numbers just released by the U.S. Treasury. That is the second highest deficit in history. In fact, Barack Obama now has the dubious distinction of the three highest deficits all happening on his watch.

From the Hill:

The U.S budget deficit for fiscal year 2011 is $1.299 trillion, the second largest shortfall in history.

The nation only ran a larger deficit for the 2009 fiscal year, which included the dramatic collapse of financial markets and a huge bailout effort by the government. The nation's deficit that year was $1.412 trillion.

This year's deficit is slightly higher than fiscal year 2010, when the nation ran a $1.293 trillion deficit. Fiscal years run through Sept. 30.

Obama will likely make it four in a row one year from now as his own budget shop is estimating a $1.1 trillion deficit for 2012.

The 2009 deficit still holds the record at $1.412 trillion. In 2010 the deficit reached $1.293. In just three years, more than $4 trillion of red ink has been added to the debt. The government's fiscal year ends September 30.

Prior to the Obama Administration, the largest nominal deficit ever recorded was $458 billion in 2008, the last year of the Bush Administration. That is barely one-third of each of the Obama Administration's dubious deficit records.

Barely a month into office back in 2009, the ever-confident Obama promised "to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office."

If the Republicans were smart (and that's a stretch), they would repeatedly bring this up and say that Obama blatantly lied to the American people. In fact, they should start calling him a liar every time they open their mouths with the caveat that the American people deserve better. The time for playing nice is over. Use the libtard Alinsky tactics against them.

Even some Dems are seeing how Obama's policies are destroying business:

Townhall wrote:

Dem Mayor Pleads for Obama to Stop New Regulations Driving Small Businesses Out of Business

Mayor Carolyn A. Kirk, Democrat Gloucester Massachusetts, pleads for President Obama to stop new regulations driving small businesses out of business. This Mayor "of the oldest fishing port in America" voted for Obama, went to his inauguration, and says she is now, "Losing Faith in Our Government." Kirk pleads for the President to get personally involved and stop the Commerce Department's overzealous enforcement of fishing regulations (something the Commerce Department Inspector General just slammed NOAA for) and the costly and burdensome regulations brought on by The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) new "Catch Shares" commercial fishing scheme. Kirk reiterates her invitation for President Obama to come to her city to see firsthand the problems NOAA has wrought on her city.

A study conducted by a former director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that a price control provision of Barack Obama's jobs bill would actually destroy 238,000 jobs.

Obama's bill contains a provision requiring drug manufacturers to pay rebates to the government on prescription drugs for Medicaid/Medicare dual-eligible participants and other low income seniors. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President of American Action Forum and a former Director of the CBO, says that these price controls "would put people out of work, increase costs for seniors and privately-insured patients, and slow research and development for new drugs." The net effect would be a loss of 238,000 jobs in pharmaceutical and related employment industries according to the newly released report co-authored by Holtz-Eakin.

Obama consistently claims that his bill would create 1.9 million jobs. That's a number generated by Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's, and a cheerleader for the Administration. Zandi generated the estimate before even knowing that the White House planned to "pay for" the legislation with a $1.5 trillion permanent tax increase. After getting the rest-of-the-story, Zandi amended his analysis. In a letter to Congress, Zandi stood by his rosy jobs prediction, but noted that the tax increases would create a "drag on the economy" within a year of implementation, and by 2015 the economy would be in "the same place" as now.

The same place, Mr. Zandi? Not exactly – don't forget half a trillion more spending of money we don't have and $1.5 trillion more in permanent taxes.

Bloomberg doubted Zandi and the President's projections, too. They surveyed 34 other economists. Not one was as optimistic as Zandi. In fact the average job creation estimate by the group was a paltry 288,000. Five said the legislation would produce zero new jobs. Since Obama's wants to spend $447 billion to get there, if the average estimate were to come true that works out to $1.6 million per job.

No one should need further evidence that Obama and the Administration don't have a clue about how to create jobs and get the economy moving. Virtually everything they have tried and every idea they float is a jobs killer instead of creator. The consequences of this latest idea to implement price controls on prescription drugs would be immediate and significant. The rebates "could either constitute a direct, dollar-for-dollar reduction in revenue to the pharmaceutical industry, and could make some medicines too costly to produce," says Holtz-Eakin. "As a result, these drugs would be withdrawn from the market and the revenue reduction would be even larger than the rebates paid to the government. This loss in revenue to the pharmaceutical industry could both reduce employment and create higher prices for consumers," the former CBO director concluded. The untold part of the story would be in loss of quality of life and health care if drugs are not available, and because of stifled research, new advancements are not made.

For the time being, the good news is that Obama's jobs bill doesn't look to be going anywhere but in the trash bin on Capitol Hill.

LOL One of these days more peeps will learn that whenever a politician wants something 'passed NOW!' it usually a very bad thing. (See PPACA)

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October 18th, 2011, 3:06 pm

wjb21ndtown

Re: Obama Bashing Thread

Obama is really a classless idiot. Did anyone see his horrible speech regarding "cutting the bill up and passing it in pieces." He more or less called the Republicans in Congress stupid, said that they couldn't comprehend it as one complete Bill, so they'll pass it in pieces instead. What a classless, smug, arrogant piece of crap he is... Anyone that thinks he's a good leader has to have mental problems, or simply fails to understand what it means to lead.

October 18th, 2011, 3:25 pm

TheRealWags

Megatron

Joined: December 31st, 2004, 9:55 amPosts: 12534

Re: Obama Bashing Thread

wjb21ndtown wrote:

Obama is really a classless idiot. Did anyone see his horrible speech regarding "cutting the bill up and passing it in pieces." He more or less called the Republicans in Congress stupid, said that they couldn't comprehend it as one complete Bill, so they'll pass it in pieces instead. What a classless, smug, arrogant piece of crap he is... Anyone that thinks he's a good leader has to have mental problems, or simply fails to understand what it means to lead.

Wow! No, I didn't hear about that; then again since its football season and our Lions are doing well, I haven't been paying attention to the news as much

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Detroit vs. EverybodyClowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right....

Wjb, yea I saw him say that yesterday, but that's par for the course with him. That's why I say that Republicans ought to grow a pair of balls for a change. Screw the high road. They need to start calling Obama a liar and a socialist every time they open their mouths between now and the election. I know Sarah will do it, but will anybody else?

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October 18th, 2011, 4:35 pm

TheRealWags

Megatron

Joined: December 31st, 2004, 9:55 amPosts: 12534

Re: Obama Bashing Thread

slybri19 wrote:

They need to start calling Obama a liar and a socialist every time they open their mouths between now and the election. I know Sarah will do it, but will anybody else?

Just wondering here, but wouldn't anyone that is in favor of Social Security, Medicare, Medicade (to name a couple) be considered a 'Socialist'? These are, after all, socialistic policies which have been in place for many years.

I'm of the opinion that we need to 'create' (for lack of a better term) our own economic system that will take parts of others and mesh them together, but then again what the hell do I know, I'm just a puter geek

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Detroit vs. EverybodyClowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right....

October 18th, 2011, 5:01 pm

WarEr4Christ

QB Coach - Brian Callahan

Joined: October 26th, 2005, 11:48 pmPosts: 3056Location: Elkhart, In.

Re: Obama Bashing Thread

Do you want a perfect picture of the SS system? In watching the movie Cinderella Man (boxing movie) Russell Crowe goes to the new SS office and receives a gift of X amount of dollars. Upon his winning the next fight he returns to pay that money back, much to the shock and amazement of the teller dispensing the money.

SS, Medicaid, and Medicare have been with us for so long that we are CONDITIONED as a Nation in to believing that it is our right to have such things. It was the first step in getting us to drink the government milk and now through Obama's policies and continued efforts, he's trying to get this country to step up to the teet.

It is SO VERY PLAIN to see but people aren't speaking on it loudly enough.

The conditioning process only takes ONE GENERATION for it to become EXPECTED POLICY.

The mentality is: "Why do I need to work when the government will pay me not to?" Government pays food, housing, medical, utilities, cell phones, and now salaries, all you have to do is step up to the plate.

But here's the question: With the National ID law, and the work that has been put into buyer trends (grocery swipe cards), how significant is the danger in government control? IF YOU DON'T TAKE THE GOVERNMENT BUYER/SELLER ID, WE WILL CUT OFF ALL OF WHAT YOU DEPEND ON NOW. Do you see where the government would have too much authority, and people are left without a real choice.

I'm not trying to be conspiracy theorist, but we have been a cashless society for a long time, and are moving ever more close to that reality. We have commercials on t.v. that show the steady flow of credit using customers who are suddenly stopped by one idiot trying to pay cash. If he'd of just got in line with the credit, all would be smooth.

Using what I've read from the Bible, it concerns me when it says that NO ONE shall buy, sell, or trade without the "mark." So what is the mark? I've heard it describes as an implant but that seems a little out there, except for the family in Florida who volunteered for the trial run implantation in the 90's.

Just wondering here, but wouldn't anyone that is in favor of Social Security, Medicare, Medicade (to name a couple) be considered a 'Socialist'? These are, after all, socialistic policies which have been in place for many years.

To an extent, yes. However, those programs are so entrenched within our society, that they would be virtually impossible to eliminate at this point. This is also another reason to repeal Obamacare as quickly as possible before it becomes entrenched within society as well. Once you give people "free" stuff, it's rather difficult to take it away.

Barack Obama’s disastrous first 1,000 days By Nile Gardiner World Last updated: October 18th, 2011

If recent polls are any indication, it is doubtful that President Obama will enjoy another 1,000 days in the White House. And looking at his track record over the course of his first 33 months in office, it is not hard to see why. It is hard to think of a presidency in modern times that has done more to damage the United States both at home and abroad than the current one, with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter’s. Like his Democratic predecessor in the 1970’s, Barack Obama has left the world’s dominant superpower on its knees, with faith in US leadership now being questioned across the globe.

Since taking office in January 2009, President Obama has ushered in a period of relentless economic decline for the United States. His administration has added $4.2 trillion to the national debt (now standing at $14.9 trillion), lost 2.2 million jobs, introduced a vastly expensive health-care albatross, and spent nearly $800 billion on a failed stimulus package. At the same time, house prices across the country have tumbled at an unprecedented rate, consumer confidence has plummeted, and millions more Americans are now dependent upon food stamps. International confidence in the US economy has fallen to its lowest levels in decades, with credit agency Standard and Poor’s downgrading of America’s AAA credit rating for the first time in 70 years in August this year. As I noted in a piece at the time:

Since President Obama took office in January 2009, the United States has embarked on the most ambitious failed experiment in Washington meddling in US history. Huge increases in government spending, massive federal bailouts, growing regulations on businesses, thinly veiled protectionism, and the launch of a vastly expensive and deeply unpopular health care reform plan, have all combined to instill fear and uncertainty in the markets.

Is it any wonder that just 17 percent of Americans now believe the country is moving in the right direction, according to RealClear Politics? Or that 81 percent of Americans “are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed”, according to Gallup? As a series of major Gallup polls have shown, public disillusionment with the federal government has now reached an all-time high, with 69 percent of Americans now saying “they have little or no confidence in the legislative branch of government”, with 46 percent believing “the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.”

And President Obama’s record on the world stage has also been poor. Despite two high-profile successes in taking out al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and more recently Anwar al-Awlaki (both upon the foundations of President Bush’s war on terror), US foreign policy under Obama has been a confusing mess. The shameless appeasement of Iran has allowed the rogue state to advance perilously close to nuclear weapons capability, while the naïve “reset” approach towards Russia has only encouraged a more aggressive and assertive Moscow. At the same time, traditional alliances with Great Britain and Israel have been downgraded, and key allies in eastern and central Europe thrown under the bus to feed the Russian bear. While America’s defences have grown weaker, China’s military might has grown significantly stronger, as have the offensive capabilities of hostile regimes in both Asia and Latin America, including Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

As Barack Obama approaches the remaining 14 months of his presidency, there is a distinct air of US decline. It is of course a state of decline that can be reversed with the right policies and leadership in place. There is nothing inevitable about the demise of the United States, but its renewal must rest upon a dramatic reversal of the most Left-wing agenda of any American presidency since 1979. As Gallup’s polling has emphatically demonstrated, Americans are overwhelmingly rejecting the Big Government agenda of the Obama presidency, which has spectacularly failed to create jobs, generate wealth, and instill economic confidence.

The biggest failure of this administration, and there have been many, has been its central belief that government knows best, and that the way to prosperity is to spend ever greater amounts of taxpayers’ money on the backs of hard-working Americans. As a result, the United States is a nation on a precipice, facing towering debts and the threat of a double dip recession at a time when 14 million Americans are already out of work. Ultimately, it is economic freedom, minimal government intervention, and greater individual liberty that can put America back on its feet, rather than endless bailouts, higher taxes and suffocating government regulation, all hallmarks of the Obama experiment. Ultimately, the world needs a powerful United States that is a beacon of hope to the world, rather than a basket case of failed liberal policies.

Government programs don't have to be socialist in nature, even if they distribute wealth. Socialism has to do with the govt. take over of industry, hence the healthcare reform bill, auto/bank bailout literally giving the govt. partial ownership of those companies, etc.

The Obama campaign has more than $60 million cash on hand. In an economy this bad, you'd think a presidential campaign that flush would be happy to pay good money for a talented designer to create a campaign poster.

But the folks at Obama campaign have taken a page from the Arianna Huffington book of economic exploitation and called on "artists across the country" to create a poster ... for free.

And here's the kicker. It's a jobs poster.

Yes, the Obama campaign is soliciting unpaid labor to create a poster "illustrating why we support President Obama's plan to create jobs now, and why we'll re-elect him to continue fighting for jobs for the next four years."

If you win? You get: A framed copy of your own poster, signed by the president ("approximate retail value $195").

And if you don't win? Well, that's too bad. You've not only lost the contest, you've also surrendered your intellectual property. "All submissions will become the property of Obama for America," according to the fine print.

The campaign presents a "creative brief" that offers potential slogans for the poster, including: "Fighting for jobs," "Get America back to work," "Made in the USA," and "Support small business."

To this list, let us helpfully suggest adding the tagline of San Francisco designer Mike Montiero: "F*ck You. Pay Me."

Monteiro — better known to his Twitter followers as @Mike_FTW — is the design director at Mule Design. "I find it ironic that the campaign is kicking off this big jobs program by asking designers to do free work for them," he tells Rolling Stone. Monteiro says he's a supporter of the campaign as well as a donor ("some of that cash on hand is mine"), but he adds: "I get furious when people ask for free design work, and even more furious when designers do work for free."

"The design industry has been hit as hard as a lot of other groups," Monteiro says. "We need jobs too."

Beyond the not-so-delicious irony of a rich campaign asking starving artists for free work in the middle of the Great Recession, there's also a potential campaign-finance issue at play here. If the Obama campaign asked a printing shop to produce the winning poster for free, for example, it would run afoul of the Federal Elections Commission for accepting an illicit in-kind donation. Providing valuable design work may present the same trouble. While the Federal Election Commission would not comment on the specific poster campaign, spokeswoman Mary Brandenberger tells Rolling Stone that "services offered free or at less than the usual charge result in an in-kind contribution."

Montiero estimates that the campaign would have to spend anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000 to contract with a professional designer to create a poster for a national campaign. That sum is far in excess of the individual contribution limit of $2,500.

I should add that Rolling Stone isn't the most conservative magazine out there, so that just adds to the ridiculousness of this story.

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October 19th, 2011, 3:24 pm

WarEr4Christ

QB Coach - Brian Callahan

Joined: October 26th, 2005, 11:48 pmPosts: 3056Location: Elkhart, In.

Re: Obama Bashing Thread

But wasn't it the government that pulled the social programs from the churches? If I remember correctly it was churches running soup kitchens and housing people during off times, and now it's everything but.

I'm not suggesting the church gets back into it to preach before you eat as some do, but if the church sees a need and chooses to meet it, then that goes a long way with starting a relationship and forming a freindship which can lead to the latter. The most important part is that the church does JUST WHAT JESUS DID, met the need first.